Netflix is over and turned in! :D

For this week's post, I decided to share with you all how I generally come up with topics to write about each week. So far, I haven't missed a day of class. I find it very interesting to just listen to the discussions and the daily quizzes keep me on my toes. It's also really interesting when Professor Downing calls on individual students to participate in the discussion. I'm not really sure how each student is chosen but it seems to have something to do with how the roster is setup. I keep hearing the same student, David Balderama, get called. Poor David! My name has only been called once and that was during the first week of school. My viewpoint is that I want to get called on just so I can participate in the discussion BUT I would love to know ahead of time so that I can prepare to answer correctly.  ....Only in a perfect world ha!

Anyway, the whole point of that spiel on my class attendance was to share how I come up with blogpost ideas. Generally, as I take handwritten notes in class, I star topics or bits of code that I find especially interesting. Sometimes I even leave a little note that says something like "good idea for blogpost" or "might be on the exam".

This week, the two topics I found most interesting came from two of our quizzes. We were tasked with calculating the outputs of Python's map() and reduce()  built-in functions given the quiz inputs. It was a good learning exercise to be able to understand the algorithm behind the functions before Professor Downing revealed that they were both already built into the language. I'm 98% sure these two functions are also going to be on the exam!

Hello there!

This past week in CS 313E, I came across a great quote and several interesting facts that I would like to share!

"Don't stress about graduating on-time, graduate well." This was on Monday, September 15th, as Professor Downing encouraged the class to attend the Engineering and Natural Sciences career fairs.

An 'exception' in Python is a type of class and it is the parent of 'ValueError' and 'KeyError'. I'm not too sure how useful this will be for assignments but I know it will definitely be useful when studying for the exams!

If we see 'assert False' in Professor Downing's code, it means the code never reaches that point & we have to figure out why. I can definitely see myself centering my exam study strategy on this.

A type is a type. OOOOH! That's so cool to think about! Think about it.... :)

--From the Bloomberg In-Class Talk--

There are so many tools out there that support and enhance software design and engineering. These include Emacs as a code editor and Doxygen for documentation. I wonder how many is too many after a while. How do software engineers manage these tools?

Hortonworks partnered with Bloomberg. Their partnership is especially interesting to me because Hortonworks is a member company of the organization I currently work for!

Some Bloomberg employees participate in FIRST Robotics Mentoring. I was on a FIRST Robotics team in high school! Team 118 will always have a special place in my heart! :)

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I'm glad I was able to share my week in CS 313E with you! Comment and let me know if you found any of these facts particularly interesting!

Thanks for reading,
JL

Yay! The first CS 313E project of the semester has been submitted!

It was definitely a learning experience to say the least. Working on Collatz helped to solidify the following two lessons for me:

Lesson 1: Piazza and Study Buddies are Crucial
If you read my post from last week, you already know how I feel about Piazza. I love it! It's usefulness really came into fruition with this first assignment. With a simple search I found discussions and questions based on the same issues I was facing. The Piazza posts were also really helpful in finding a study buddy. As Professor Downing continually stresses, our success in this class is a function of how proactive we are in reaching out for help when necessary and offering help when possible. I'm really happy that I found a classmate to work with during the Collatz storm. I was able to explain bits of the instructions she was not clear on and she helped to refresh my memory on Python and git commands.

Speaking of git....

Lesson 2: Git and GitHub are Crucial
Where have these tools been all my life?! Seriously, it was so helpful to have a log of the changes I made to my code and to be able to 'revert' back to a previous version when a bright idea turned out not so bright in the end. These tools enhance what Software Development is all about: trial and error. Before I knew about these tools (i.e. before Professor Downing's class), I would have to save several copies of my code as I changed it to prevent disastrous events such as a compilation failure due to a syntax error or the blue screen of death. Thankfully, git and GitHub are like software versions of me that create copies of code for safe keeping.

Ahh, Project 1 has been submitted and it's time to move on to Project 2. Be sure to come back next week to see how things go!

Thanks for reading,
--JL

This past week in CS 313E has been great! We spent the majority of the time discussing Collatz, our first of five projects.

Our class is turning out to be really interactive. Professor Downing designed the class in a way that basically forces us to meet and work with our classmates. For me, that's great - I love meeting new people! One of the tools we use to collaborate with our classmates is Piazza. We can use Piazza to ask any question related to the course material and assignments. Extra credit points can be earned by viewing the majority of the posts and writing instructor-endorsed comments for questions asked by other students. Extra credit points aside, Piazza is a useful tool.

One of my favorite aspects of Piazza is the option to have a daily digest email sent to your inbox summarizing the activity for each of the classes you have enrolled in. While email can sometimes be annoying, I find this digest email so valuable and necessary for my success in the class. In addition to helping me stay updated with the class and class discussions, the digest email helps to keep CS 313E at the top of my mind. My only grumble with Piazza is that their mobile app is currently only available on the App Store. Piazza, please come to Google Play! I really want to replace the emails with push notifications!

Before, I leave to work some more on Collatz, I just want to share my favorite topic from class this week: HTML file production from Python documentation.

I'll see y'all again next week! Thanks for reading!

JL